Cruel Traditions
by signelchan
Summary: When she was young, Lissa may have been convinced to touch a hot stove, and she may have decided that seeing if others around her would do the same was going to become a big part of deciding who she wanted to spent her life with. Maybe. [Modern AU]


Each of the three siblings had a different idea of who they wanted to spend their lives with: Emmeryn wanted to dedicate her life and time to helping the less fortunate, and if that meant casting off love, she was fine with that; Chrom wanted to be with someone smarter than he was, so that he could rely on them for any decisions that needed to be made; and Lissa wanted to be with someone that would make her feel like the princess she deserved to be. All three knew that their goals would be attainable in some manner, it was all a matter of how they achieved it.

And after one fateful night involving the kitchen stove and a dare between brother and sister, Lissa had to add a qualifier to what she desired. Not only did her future spouse need to treat her like royalty, he had to make her feel like she was the brightest person around. Sure, she was a simple twelve-year-old girl at the time of this decision, but she knew within herself that this was what she would always want. After all, she knew that her future self would need someone around that could make her stupid moments seem tame.

She needed to marry a guy who would, without question, touch a hot stove to see if it was indeed hot. To be fair, the light that would normally indicate such a thing was broken and Emmeryn never seemed to need to rely on it, so how was Lissa to have known in the first place that the stove was hot? (Probably the same way that Chrom had known to dare her to touch it to check, that being that their sister had just been preparing dinner minutes before.) She had to touch it to see, and that resulted in her crying from the searing pain and a large blister that formed itself on the burned section of her finger, a blister that made doing anything with her hand difficult and served as a reminder that she lacked a fair amount of common sense. So it was maybe not the most perfect of ideas for her to want to grow up to marry someone with even less sense about them than she had, but it was her romantic goal in life, and she was going to make it happen.

It took many years of trying to bait guys into touching the hot stove before Lissa could say that she had successfully found herself her future husband, even if the poor soul didn't know that by burning his hand he had sealed his romantic fate with her. It was some mid-winter Saturday when Chrom decided he was going to invite his friends over to watch a couple sporting events and just hang out like the college-age guys they were, and he recruited Lissa to be in charge of the snacks for the afternoon. She wasn't up for the task, as she had sort of never bothered learning how to actually cook, always having had Emmeryn around for that task (and since Emmeryn's untimely death, she hadn't bothered trying to fill her sister's role), but Chrom insisted that she do it.

"What else could you possibly do today?" he asked, stooping down to get on her eye-level. "It's going to help you build character, you know." She rolled her eyes and mumbled something about how she didn't know how to cook, not like what he had bought ingredients for, and he chuckled. "If you can't do it right, that's okay. Just try. And, er, if it gets bad, there's always pizzas in the freezer. It's a group of guys watching sports. We'll be fine with chips and pizza."

"Then can't you just have chips and pizza to begin with? Why do I have to try and make weird dishes for your friends?" Putting her hands on her hips and puffing her cheeks out, Lissa would have easily started going into some sort of hissy fit had there not been someone knocking at the door then to distract Chrom. He ruffled her hair and told her she'd do just fine at preparing the snacks, and then he was off to greet his friends for their afternoon of fun, leaving her standing there, huffing in anger at how ignorant her brother was being. What kind of responsible guy left his fifteen-year-old sister in charge of cooking anything that required an oven and a hot stove, anyway?

She wasn't even sure how long she stood in there, trying to make sense of what she was supposed to be doing. For every minute she had of maybe understanding how to make heads-or-tails of the instructions the recipes for fun party dips and snacks had, she probably spent five more getting even more hopelessly confused at what was going on. Everything that needed the oven she could handle, because that was as easy as matching temperatures and times to what the bags and boxes said; it was just a matter of making sense of everything that needed the stovetop.

From in the other room, she could hear one of Chrom's friends talking about how he could go into the kitchen and help out, a suggestion that Lissa really wished her brother would take to heart. But all she heard Chrom say was for the guy to stop worrying about the food and that it would come eventually, which made Lissa sigh and regret actually being home that day. Why couldn't she have found some excuse to go hang out with friends? Why did she have to be trying to fill the role that their older sister had done so well?

"Looks like you're a little lost there, eh?" It wasn't a voice that Lissa heard often, but just hearing its brash tones sent startled shivers down her spine. As she stammered to try and come up with an answer, she turned to look at who had joined her in the kitchen, and when she saw the giant grin on the newcomer's face, she couldn't help but start smiling too. He laughed, stepping a bit closer to her. "Don't worry. Chrom might've said that Stahl couldn't help, but he said nothing 'bout ol' Vaike givin' you a hand."

"Last time you tried to help me with something, we drilled a hole through the wall on accident." She was still mighty nervous about Vaike being the person who was trying to come to her rescue, but she knew that it could have always been worse. It could have been someone who would have gone straight to tell Chrom that she wasn't doing what she had been told to do, ignoring the fact that she didn't know how to do it. At least Vaike was usually the one of Chrom's friends who was always around when she was doing things that had components that needed to be kept from her brother at all costs.

"Eh, let's not mention that one. Shoulda figured that usin' a power tool like we were was only gonna end in disaster. 'Least Chrom ain't figured out why that picture's hangin' in the bathroom like that, yeah?" When she meekly nodded, he let out another round of laughter, coming close enough to her that, if she had wanted to, she could have hugged him for being so supportive at that moment. "So what's the deal in here today? Chrom's got'cha on kitchen duty and ya don't know where to start?"

She raised one of her hands, two fingers placed slightly apart. "I know about this much about cooking," she admitted, "and all that's about how to work the oven. I can't figure out how to start cooking something on the stove to save my life."

"That's no problem, 'cause the Vaike can show ya how to do just that." He put a supportive hand on her shoulder, looking at the collection of food sitting on the counter. "Now what's it that's got ya so confused? Looks to me like boilin' some water would be helpful. Y'know how to do that, don't you?" When she gave a defeated sigh and a meek shake of the head, he pat her a few times with the hand already on her. "'kay, so it looks like we'll start there. No problem. Ol' Teach is always willin' to help someone out, 'specially the li'l sister of one of his best friends."

"Do you seriously only see me as Chrom's little sister? I'm totally so much more than that." While it was true that there were many defining qualities that Lissa had, she did have to keep in mind that the entire reason Vaike was even there was because of Chrom, and so if he was going to be equating her to who she was related to, it wasn't that big of a deal. But she was an immature teenage girl, and she didn't quite see things that way. Her eyes focused not on the task of getting some water boiled but instead of something else that she had always wanted to do, and might just have had the perfect chance to do it. "Anyway, water, right? I guess that would need the stove to be hot…"

"Yeah, that's kinda necessary to get water boilin'. Here, lemme get a pot ready, and I'll walk ya through the steps like any good man who calls himself Teach would." He stepped away to rifle through one of the kitchen cabinets for a big enough pot to hold everything he figured needed to be in it, and while he was distracted she made the move to turn the stove on, remembering that the thing was ancient and made it next to impossible to tell if anything was hot without touching to check.

And that was when Lissa realized that there was something she could attempt to do right then and there. The chance to trick someone into touching a hot stove didn't just come around every day, after all, so she needed to take advantage of it while she could. After he got the pot filled with water, he went to set it down on the stove, but based on the way he was squinting to read worn-out dials, she knew he was trying to tell if any of the burners were on. "I don't think I've turned anything on," she lied, having to bite down on her lip to keep herself from spoiling the fun by laughing. "Normally Chrom tells me to touch it to check, so I gu—"

"Touchin' a stove? Man, I always knew Chrom was intense but that's crazy." Having cut Lissa's sentence off, it caught her by complete surprise when he shoved the water-filled pot into her hands before he cracked his knuckles and stared down the stove. "Vaike loves himself a bit of a challenge." Before Lissa could rethink her white lie and stop him, he had slammed his hand down on the one burner she had turned on—and the lovely thing about that old stove was that it heated up _fast_.

His hand stayed on the burner for a couple seconds, during which Lissa's eyes had widened as big as they possibly could and she had dropped the pot of water in shock. She hadn't really just gotten a guy to touch a hot stove, had she? Clearly she had, though, because the moment it registered through his thick skull that he was letting his hand burn, he was pulling away, letting out a loud scream about how it was definitely hot; when he tried to get himself over to the sink to run his hand under some cold water, he slipped on what Lissa had spilled in her shock at what was happening, which wouldn't have been so bad had he not fallen right into that hot burner…

Chrom walked into the kitchen moments later to see not just what was the holdup on the food, but what the screaming had been about, and found his sister frantically pouring water onto Vaike's face as he lay whimpering on the floor. "Er, might I ask what happened here? You aren't trying to kill him, are you, Lissa?"

"It's a very long story, Chrom, and I'd love to tell you it, but thanks to you making me cook I think I may have accidentally done something really bad." She, of course, wasn't referring to the fact that she had caused her brother's friend to sustain burns on his hand and face, but instead she was referring to the fact that, if she were to follow the rules her younger self had created, she was now going to have to marry this guy. "Also, uh, I think the stuff in the oven might be done. I totally forgot to check."

"Yes, well, making sure someone's alive is a bit more important than food. You worry with…well, whatever it is you're doing, and I'll take care of what's in the oven." Little did Chrom know that when his sister said it might have been done, she meant that she was supposed to get it out of the oven at about the same time Vaike had walked into the kitchen. When he opened the door, a cloud of thick smoke filled the air, quickly setting off every alarm in the house because of what should have been some simple snacks being burned into literal crisps.

It was the last time that Lissa was asked to cook for a very, very long time. In fact, the next time she was even put in charge of a meal, it was the first night in her very own house, and she was supposed to be cooking for everyone who had been helping with the move. It was a daunting task, especially since the last time she had been expected to cook anything had been more years ago than she could count on one hand, but in her kitchen with all-new appliances and whatnot, she felt at least a bit more comfortable with what she was supposed to be doing. At any rate, she wasn't going to have someone touch a hot stove to check to see it was hot, and that was good.

She was, like that last time, staring at everything she needed to prepare when someone came into the kitchen to help her out. "Let's see if you've learned anything in the past few years since ya last tried this whole 'make food for everyone' thing." Bending down to kiss her on the cheek, Vaike hesitated when he heard her grumbling about something or other. "Aw, what's the matter? Anything that ol' Vaike can help ya out with?"

"No, no, the last thing I need is to accidentally hurt you again while I'm trying to cook." Even though it had been so many years since that incident, Lissa couldn't help but still feel guilty about what had happened, especially when she thought about how that day had done so much to lead up to where she was at that very moment. If it hadn't been for her failure at cooking, she never would have had to admit to Vaike that she had kinda-sorta told herself that she had to marry anyone who she managed to trick into touching a hot stove, and that would have meant that he never would have taken her words to heart, asking her to marry him after they had dated for a couple years in a relationship that no one exactly approved of except for each other. And they wouldn't have been moving into their own place after spending almost the first year of their married lives sleeping in other people's homes if it hadn't been for the absolutely bizarre reason they had come together in the first place.

"Trust me," he said, finally going in for that kiss, "ain't nothin' gonna hurt me in here tonight if I'm helpin' ya out. You'll only hurt me if ya manage to hurt yourself."

"And with everything that I'm supposed to be doing here tonight, that's totally possible." She sighed, looking at everything that she was expected to make for the meal, thinking about how if she really was left alone to handle the situation, things were most likely going to get ugly. Especially since, now that the people who had come to help with the move were beginning to get relaxed, the sounds of conversation could be heard drifting in from the other room, coupled with the occasional crying of one of the many small children who had been brought with their parents, and all of those mouths were certainly about to be begging for food. What good would it do if she refused help and made them wait longer? "Okay, I guess you can help me with the cooking. Just no touching the hot stove this time. I don't think I'd be able to bear watching that again."

He chuckled, kissing her cheek again. "Don't worry, there's no way to not know this stove's hot. It lights up when it's on. No man could manage to ignore that." At that, they began to work side-by-side to get the meal cooking, a task much easier talked about than actually done, especially when neither of them really had any idea of what they were supposed to be doing. The meal did eventually get made in an edible manner, something that several people commented on when the food was served, but when those comments were made, the two who had prepared everything weren't around to hear them.

They were back in the kitchen, cleaning up the almost disastrous mess that their cooking endeavor had created. Somehow they had managed to get different elements of the meal into various places that no food should have been, especially not in a new kitchen, but they were taking their mistake in stride, having fun cleaning while everyone else was eating. That was the case, anyway, until Lissa was trying to clean off part of the stove that hadn't been used for cooking and she leaned just a bit too far into the single burner that had been turned on. Her scream when she realized her mistake wasn't able to be heard by anyone not in the kitchen, thankfully, but it was definitely a cause for concern by the person who did hear it. "You okay there? Screamin' like that ain't ever a good thing…"

"Yes, yeah, I'm fine!" Having jumped back from the stove, Lissa looked down at herself to make sure that she hadn't burned through her clothing in the process, and she was slightly relieved to see that it didn't look like there was any damage to the cloth of her dress. "I guess it totally slipped my mind that it might still have been hot. I'm not exactly queen of the kitchen, after all."

"You'll be queen 'a this kitchen here soon enough. Comes with the territory of havin' a house to ourselves. You'll be the house queen and ol' Vaike'll be your king, and," he wrapped his arms around Lissa, placing both hands tenderly on the swollen curve of her stomach, "this l'il guy here will be the prince. Just like you've always wanted, yeah?"

She nodded, smiling at simply how cute hearing that had been. "Just like I always wanted."

* * *

Raising a son to not be as dim-witted as his parents were was a challenge, especially since the two people doing the raising were the ones that had both been stupid enough to fall for touching a hot stove. The best way to approach this particular problem was to keep the boy away from any and all kitchen appliances that he could possibly burn himself on, lest he fall right into the trap that had ensnared both his parents at one time or another, and while it was a good attempt at saving little Owain's hands from meeting the terrible fate of being burned, it did also have the very unfortunate side effect of never teaching him proper stovetop etiquette.

This would, no doubt, come back to haunt everyone, a mistake that should have been prevented long before it ever happened. Having been told he wasn't allowed to use a stove for his entire life to that point, it came as a bit of a shock to Owain one day as he was spending time at his uncle's house, watching his cousin make some sort of soup for everyone, when she turned to him with the look of an idea in her eyes. "Why don't you help me out?" she asked, offering him the spoon she was using to stir her creation. "You're, what, fourteen? You should know how to cook by now."  
"Eh, my parents never taught me. A strong guy like me doesn't need to know how to cook, not when there's more interesting and worthy things to be researching. I bet Uncle Chrom doesn't know how to cook, anyway." Owain grinned, but let his expression fade when he saw that his cousin wasn't finding what he said amusing. "Oh come on, Lucina, that was golden. And probably true."

"Since my father had to cook for your mother for the longest time, it is most definitely not true. I can't believe you'd even insinuate something like that!" Pushing the spoon into one of Owain's hands, Lucina gave a small "hmph" and turned her back to her cousin. "Just do what I was literally just doing. I'm going to find Aunt Lissa and let her know that you're learning to cook before she's cooking for you until you're ancient!"

"But Lucina, I don't know what…" His whining trailed off as he watched his cousin walk out of the kitchen, leaving him in a place he wasn't familiar with, being expected to do something he wasn't sure how to do. "Guess this is a challenge that this brave warrior's got to face on his own. No man should be scared of a bit of cooking, should he?" Before he started to actually do as he had been told, Owain switched which hand the spoon was in, choosing to stir the soup with his non-dominant hand rather than the one he had moved to be covering his face. It wasn't an easy task to stir with a hand so used to not being used, but he seemed to be proud of himself for doing it. "Ah, yes, this is what all good guys strive for doing. I'll be a master chef in no time!"

He was standing there cackling to himself about how great his cooking skills were when his cousin came back, bringing with her his mom, who gasped in shock at the sight of her son actually doing something productive in the kitchen. "Would you look at this! My baby Owain is actually cooking something! And at a younger age than I ever learned how to!" She rushed to his side, pinching his cheek once she got there. "I'm so proud of you!"

"Mother, please. I need none of this babying or praise, not for doing something so mindless as making a soup." He shook off her grabbing him, and returned to focusing on his task. "Or, rather, stirring a soup. No clue how one would make something so delicious."

"And that's why I say he needs to be taught how to cook. Now give me back my spoon so I can finish up here." Getting what she had asked for, Lucina got her cousin and aunt to move aside so she could finish taking care of her food, and once she was done she turned the stove off and moved herself and her pot to the other side of the kitchen, most likely to add other ingredients to her meal and finish preparing it.

Owain, feeling a bit of improperly-placed pride for what he had just done, looked at his mom with a big smile. "So, mother dear, when are you going to allow me to cook like that at home? Wouldn't it be lovely for you to get to rest and relax whenever mealtime beckons?"

"It would be, but I don't think you're quite ready to be cooking on your own yet." Lissa returned a smile at her son, but her eyes quickly darted over to the stovetop, which looked as if it hadn't been used at all, even though it clearly had just been in use—if she wasn't mistaken, it looked like Chrom hadn't ever bothered updating that old appliance, even though it had been busted for decades. That was when she had a fleeting idea, one she knew she shouldn't ever act on, but the temptation existed. "However, since you did help make your very first meal over here, I guess I should teach you a little trick to using this stove."

"A trick? No tricks are ever needed to achieve perfection." Ignoring the sound of his cousin snickering where she stood, Owain raised his eyebrows at his mother and how serious she seemed to be. "But if you insist on teaching me this 'trick' that you have, I guess I won't complain too much. It's gotta be a family secret, huh?"

She was trying to convince herself not to do it, not to subject her son to what was about to happen, but the temptation was too real for Lissa to ignore. "Not so much a secret as it is a requirement to be part of the family. After all, if I hadn't taught your father this trick, me and him never would have gotten together…and that would mean we wouldn't have had you. So I guess this is kind of a big deal."

"A requirement to be part of the family? I've been part of the family for fourteen years and I haven't done it!" Cupping his face in his hands, Owain's eyes widened. "You must tell me more so I can fix that right away!"

"I don't know, Owain, it's kind of a big deal and I don't want you to feel bad when you fail at it." Lissa could hear Lucina laughing hysterically at what was being said, the girl knowing what her aunt was talking about (because at one point or another, Chrom had tried to pull this same trick on her, but she was sensible enough to not fall for it), and she could only hope that Owain would catch on that something was amiss. The problem was, he was just as mentally dense as his father, and it was going to take a lot more than Lucina finding something funny to get him to catch on that he was being pranked. Still, she was too far into setting up the prank to back out, and if that meant harming her son a bit in a lesson on stove safety, so be it. "You've got to check to see if the stove's hot with your hand. I was thinking of maybe making some—"

"Never fear, mother! I will check right away!" Not letting his mom finish her sentence, he moved his hand from over his face, attempted to pop his knuckles, and slammed that dominant hand of his down on the exact burner that Lucina had been using to make her soup. As it was still very hot, although there was no visual indicator of this, his hand immediately began to burn, but Owain thought that showing weakness would make his mom consider his attempt at checking for heat a failure, so he sort of bit down on his lip to keep himself from screaming as he held his hand down.

It was funny to watch for maybe a second, and then Lissa realized that her son had definitely inherited the boneheaded nature of both his parents, and he was actively letting his hand burn for no real reason. "Oh god, Owain, you can stop whenever you want!"

"No, I can't stop," he whimpered, tears rolling down his cheeks. "This is a requirement to be part of the family and I cannot fail it!"

"Just lift your hand!" Watching as he flat-out refused, although he was very clearly in pain, Lissa grabbed his arm and pulled his hand off the stove for him, unable to look at the possible damage from what had just happened. Once the heat wasn't searing into his skin, Owain lost the ability to not scream, and what he managed to let out was a sickening cross between a pained yelp and a sob of absolute terror. "You weren't supposed to do it that long! What's wrong with you, not getting off of a hot burner once you've realized it's hot?"

He couldn't even manage words due to how much pain he was in, and after he was running his hand under the cold water from the sink, his mom turned to see that some of his skin that had come off of his hand was still stuck to the burner. She turned pale at the sight, before looking back at her son and seeing him almost as pale as she was. "M-mother, I might have messed up…" he said between winces and sobs. "It hurts. Bad."

"That's what you get for being so dumb," Lucina chimed in, but when she turned to see her cousin holding his hand out from under the water to show his mom what it looked like, and she saw the rawness of the palm of his hand, entire layers of skin having been burned away, she felt a bit lightheaded. "Oh my god…should I go get my father? Or my mother? Both, maybe?"

"I think getting someone would be helpful, yes." Lissa, inspecting what she had allowed to happen to her son, shook her head. "I don't think there's going to be a simple fix to this one. The time your dad fell into the stove didn't even end this badly, even though he does have a scar on his face from when it happened."

Owain's bottom lip wobbled, tears still freely streaming down his cheeks. "M-my hand's gonna be scarred from this? But t-that's my good hand!"

She knew she should have been more considerate in speaking, especially since it had been her dare gone wrong that had caused this, but Lissa couldn't help but get a little snarky with her response. "Then you should have put your other hand down instead. Your cousin was just cooking on the stove, you should have known it was hot!"

"I didn't know, mostly 'cause you n-never let me watch you cook!" He tried moving his fingers on his burned hand, but he was met solely with more pain that caused him to cry out a bit more. "N-now all my friends are gonna know how dumb I am!" That was one comment his mom wasn't going to be able to reply to, mostly because her agreeing with him there was not going to be the nicest thing to do, even if it was true.

That evening was mostly spent in the emergency room, having been driven over there by Chrom, who thought it was hilarious that yet another person had fallen victim to that stove prank, even though missing skin was a lot worse than any of the blisters that had been suffered before. There were times during the hours spent there at the hospital that Lissa really regretted ever daring her son to do such a stupid thing, mostly when nurses or doctors asked what had happened to cause such a severe burn on his hand, but he played things off as if it had been his own idea, not wanting to implicate his mom in the ordeal. Once he was heavily medicated for the pain he had been suffering, it became a completely different story.

"My mom, yeah, she said 'oh Owain, you're so strong, you can do anything,' and I was like, 'yeah, but I can't touch the stove,' and she said I could so I did and now here we are," he told one of the nurses, waving his hand around a bit. "I'm not very smart." That nurse awkwardly laughed and stepped away without agreeing or disagreeing, unsure of which to do to a medicated fourteen-year-old boy who was trying to tell her that his mom told him to touch a hot stove. Even though she actually had.

It got even better when Vaike finally showed up to see what was going on, and he was met with his fairly distraught wife and his completely disconnected son, both of whom seemed to be happy that he was there. "Er, what exactly happened? When Chrom called, he said somethin' about followin' in my footsteps, and when I asked him to explain, he just told me one of ya would do that when I got here."

"Unless Owain feels up to telling you, I guess I could," Lissa replied, taking a deep breath as she readied herself to break into the story of how she had caused her child so much pain.

"Lemme tell him, mother!" Swinging his now-bandaged hand around a bit (and hitting himself in the face in the process), Owain looked directly at his dad and gave him a huge grin. "We were at Uncle Chrom's house and Lucina was cooking and she had me cook and then I got dared to touch the stove and I did it and then we came here because I was crying and it hurt and now everything's fine." It was all said in one sentence with no pauses, an indicator of just how high on pain medication the boy was. "Except I think I might have a problem when I go to school again because I can't hold a pen with this thing on and how am I going to write without holding a pen? How do I tell cool stories to my friends about how I hurt myself if I can't write them?"

He continued babbling on about his inability to be writing with his hand so bandaged, and Vaike took that as an opportunity to look at Lissa, still trying to make sense of what was happening. "Did he say he was _dared_ to touch the stove? You didn't have anythin' to do with that, didja?"

"I may or may not have said you had done it before, and he then really wanted to do it. Like father, like son, am I right?" She started to give a small thumbs-up, before accepting defeat and sighing, dropping her hands into her lap. "No, yes, I did dare him to do it. I didn't think he'd hold his hand on the burner, though."

"So maybe he's as bright as his old man is. That's okay. He ain't dead and he'll be fine, I think, and that's what matters." Vaike looked back at Owain, who was still mid-story with no audience listening to him, for just a second, before continuing to speak to Lissa. "Now, if ya really wanna make him regret doin' this, I think ya should tell him that he's gotta find a woman he can convince to do the same damn thing. 's how ya got stuck with the Vaike for the rest of forever, so it's gotta be the same way for him."

Lissa thought about that suggestion for a second, before she too looked to see Owain nearly smack himself in the face again with that bandaged hand. "I don't know, I think maybe he shouldn't have to marry someone who lacks common sense. Obviously us getting together created a…special child, and I don't want that to continue with him. I want him to make good decisions someday."

Good decisions that clearly should never include hot stoves.

* * *

 **A/N: Written as a request fill, which had been for [someone] daring [someone] to touch a hot stove. So why not make it about my favorite FE:A family?**


End file.
